Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Creating the Past in Luray Chapter 3 "...But Slavery Cured us of that Weakness": The Search for the "Private" Public History of African Americans in Luray Chapter 4 Subverting Heritage and Memory: Luray's "Ol' Slave Auction Block" Chapter 5 Tourism and Battles for Cultural Identity Chapter 6 Recapturing Identity: The "Life on the Mountain" Exhibition at Shenandoah National Park Chapter 7 Epilogue—Interpreting for the Future
Ann Elizabeth Denkler is assistant professor of history at Shenandoah University.
Ann Denkler lifts the veil off of one of our most treasured tourist
areas to reveal the 'real people' living in Luray, Virginia. Her
contributions to discussions of heritage tourism and oral history
not only fill a void in our historical knowledge, but also unveil
the long reach of segregation. Sustaining Identity shows us what we
have been missing by not deeply interrogating the hidden terrain of
the tourist destinations we often visit and love.
*P. Williams-Forson, University of Maryland, College Park*
This book has an important and laudable thesis. Denkler makes the
correct arguments and seems to draw the correct conclusion.
*Virginia Magazine Of History - Biography, November 2008*
Denkler argues passionately for writing black history into Luray's
displays of public history.
*Journal of American History, December 2008*
Succinct, clearly written study....Denkler has provided a highly
readable study that raises important challenges....Few works on
these topics have so insightfully unpacked views of the past from
both sides of the color line. Her work is a monument to the value
of interviews in enriching research in published sources and the
interpretation of cultural landscapes.
*H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online, January
2009*
The body of critically informed interdisciplinary work that engages
with African Americans as cultural and heritage agents of tourism
is relatively non-existent in this burgeoning field. Denkler’s
Sustaining Identity, Recapturing Heritage fills a significant void
in the literature on race and travel. This book provides an
engaging, thought provoking, and well-researched historical account
of ways in which African Americans maneuvered through these
designated touristic spaces framed by the backdrop of racial
segregation across the American South. The book reveals how travel
became yet another system of control that told African American
tourists they could only visit, eat, and stay in certain places.
The African American tourism experience was separate but not equal,
experienced in more private settings and one that, to this day,
remains un-documented in the mainstream tourism scholarship that is
oblivious to racial context.
*Angel David Nieves, University of Maryland, College Park*
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